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Air India pilot locked out as cockpit door jams

Air India says the cockpit door of one of its planes got jammed during a flight while the captain was using the toilet, forcing an unscheduled landing by the co-pilot in central India. An airline statement

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Air India says the cockpit door of one of its planes got jammed during a flight while the captain was using the toilet, forcing an unscheduled landing by the co-pilot in central India.

An airline statement says the captain couldn't return to the cockpit because the door was locked and that all efforts to open it, even from inside, failed during Tuesday's flight from New Delhi to the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

The co-pilot landed the plane at the nearest airport. The door was fixed by ground maintenance staff and the plane resumed its flight.

The airline said the incident posed no danger to the passengers.

Still, the incident is the second involving Air India pilots this spring.

Earlier this month, the state-owned airline suspended a pilot and two flight attendants for what the Times of India describes as an "bizarre" cockpit incident that occurred in April.

In that incident, two attendants allegedly were in the cockpit for an extended period of time on an international flight between Bangkok and New Delhi — even sitting in the seats of the pilots.

The Times reports that at some point during the attendants' "overstay," the plane's autopilot function was accidentally disengaged. Some media reports contained allegations that pilots also had left the cockpit unattended for as long as 60 minutes in the time leading up to that incident. Air India has told CNN those claims are "baseless."

"At no point of time the cockpit was left unattended by the cockpit crew," the airline said in a statement to CNN.